“The Herr Oberstleutnant is finished?” the Oberfeldwebel asked, politely. “In which case, I will escort the Herr Oberstleutnant to his quarters.”
“I think that I would like to see Wachtmeister MacMillan before I turn in,” Bellmon said.
“Whatever the Herr Oberstleutnant wishes,” the Oberfeldwebel said.
When they reached the enlisted men’s quarters, the German noncom saluted crisply and left him. Bellmon then rapped once on MacMillan’s door and walked in without waiting for a reply. MacMillan jumped to his feet.
“Rest, Mac,” Bellmon said. MacMillan, he saw, was freshly shaven and neatly cropped. His boots were even shined.
“How goes it, Mac?” Colonel Bellmon asked.
“What did old Von want?” MacMillan asked.
“We’re being moved, on foot, at first light,” Bellmon said.
“Shit! I was practicing to kiss my first Russian,” MacMillan said.
“The enlisted men aren’t going,” Bellmon said.
“We’re not?”
“You can take your chances, Mac,” Bellmon said. “You can sit here and wait to get rolled over by the Red Army.”
“Or?”
“I’ll tell it the way I got it from von Greiffenberg,” Bellmon said. When he had finished, MacMillan looked very carefully at him.
“You trust him, Colonel, don’t you?”
“He’s a regular, Mac, like we are,” Colonel Bellmon said.
“What do you think we should do?”
“If you are caught by the SS or the Feldgendarmerie, you’re liable to be shot. Under those circumstances, Sergeant, you have no obligation to attempt to escape.”
“Just my fucking luck. Five combat jumps, and I’m going to get shot two weeks before the war is over.”
“If you like, I’ll insist that you be taken with us.”
“Into Germany? No, thank you.”
“I’ve got a map for you,” Bellmon said. “If you want it.”
“Von?” MacMillan said, taking and unfolding it. “That the route these loot trucks are taking?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure how current it is. As current, and as accurate, I’m sure, as von Greiffenberg can make it.”
Bellmon took the Colt pistol and laid it on MacMillan’s bed.
“Not, as I understand it, that anyone is paying a whole lot of attention to it, but possession of a firearm by an escaped POW is sufficient grounds under the Geneva Convention to use weaponry in his apprehension.”
MacMillan looked at the pistol.
“Maybe you better keep that, Colonel,” he said. He hoisted the front of his Ike jacket. Bellmon saw the angled butt of a Luger.
“How long have you had that?”
“Fritz gave me two of them,” he said. “Two of them and two Schmeissers. A dozen clips. About thirty minutes ago. When he told me that Von had your marching orders, and they didn’t include us.”
“So what are you going to do, Mac?” Bellmon asked.
“I’ve got one guy who speaks German, and others who speak German and Polish,” MacMillan said. “I’ve got two German uniforms, one of them a captain’s.”
“That’ll get you shot as a spy,” Bellmon said.
“If we can grab one of those trucks and put some distance between here and us, we might be able to make it.”
“Who are you taking with you? How many?”
“There will be twenty-two of us. The rest want to wait for the Russians.”
“Do they know what they’re getting into?”
“I think so,” MacMillan said. “If they don’t, they’ll damned sure find out soon enough after we’re on our way.”
They looked at each other. Bellmon sensed that this was the time he should have something to say to MacMillan. He could think of only one thing.
“Good luck, Mac,” Colonel Bellmon said.
“Same to you, Colonel,” MacMillan said. He grabbed Bellmon’s hand and shook it.
“This is the second time since I’ve been a soldier I don’t really know what to do,” the colonel said.
It was a confession of inadequacy and MacMillan saw this. He was embarrassed for Lt. Col. Robert F. Bellmon.
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “You gotta take care of those reservists. If you’re worried about me, don’t be. I’ve had enough of this POW shit. I don’t want to get stood up against a wall without a fight.”
“Thank you, Mac,” Bellmon said, emotionally.
“Fuck it, Colonel,” MacMillan replied, his own voice breaking. “Have the bugler sound the charge.”
(Five)
At 0500 hours the next morning, the 240 officer prisoners of Stalag XVII-B formed ranks in the courtyard of what, long before, had been a Polish cavalry barracks. It was cold and damp, and many of them coughed rackingly and spit up phlegm. They were sullen, resentful, and disheartened.
Colonel Graf Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg appeared. Oberleutnant Karl-Heinz von und zu Badner called “Attention.” Colonel von Greiffenberg stepped in front of the formation, and formally announced that a readjustment of German lines made necessary the removal of Stalag XVII-B to the west. He expressed regret that motor transport was not presently available.
“Colonel Bellmon,” he concluded, “will you have your officers follow me, please?”
Bellmon saluted.
Von Greiffenberg walked to one end of the formation.
“Company!” Bellmon barked. “’Ten-hut! Uh-right-face! Forward, harch! Route step, harch!”
The prisoner complement, under armed guard, shuffled, rather than marched after the prison commandant. They went out the gate, and then turned toward Stettin.
Technical Sergeant Rudy MacMillan watched them move out. He waited until the last guard had had time to come from his watchtower. He waited ten minutes more to be sure. Then he formed his ranks where the officers had stood. A coal miner from Pennsylvania, dressed in the uniform of a Wehrmacht captain, and a steelworker from Gary, Indiana, in the uniform of a corporal, both carrying Schmeisser machine pistols slung from their shoulders, marched the twenty men in American uniforms, MacMillan second back in the left rank, onto the highway, and off in the other direction.
They marched for about forty-five minutes before the right circumstances presented themselves. A Hanomag truck, its body enclosed in canvas tarpaulin, its front fender bearing the double lightning bolt runes of the SS, came down the cobblestone road.
“Take a left, Vrizinsky,” MacMillan called out. The double column of men drifted across the road. The Hanomag truck squealed to a halt. The driver opened the door and shouted an obscenity. The SS Hauptsturmführer on the passenger side stood on the running board.
MacMillan, holding the Luger in both hands, and squatting halfway to give himself stability, shot him in the forehead. PFC Vrizinsky couldn’t get his Schmeisser to fire. Private Loczowcza dropped his Schmeisser in his excitement. MacMillan jumped onto the running board and shot the driver twice in the back with his Luger.
The bodies were dragged off the road and stripped, while Private Loczowcza opened the Hanomag hood and pretended to work on it. The truck was full of wooden crates. As soon as MacMillan could change into the SS captain’s uniform, which required that he search for and find a stream to wash the blood and brain matter out of the uniform cap, he supervised the off-loading of enough crates so there would be room for the men lying two deep on their sides, inside the truck, within a cavern of crates.
Outside of Wroclaw, four hours later, they came across a similar truck. Its crew was changing a flat tire by the side of the road. MacMillan had hoped to wait until the tire was changed before taking any action, but the SS Sturmscharführer in charge persisted in trying to engage the captain in conversation, and it became necessary to shoot him and the driver and to finish changing the tire themselves.
In twenty-four hours they were in L’vov, in the Ukraine. They picked up fuel and a few rations there and kept driving. The papers of the trucks were in order, and they passed
through all but one Feldgendarmerie roadblock without incident. Near Podolskiy, Moldavia, an overzealous Unterfeldwebel of the Feldgendarmerie paid for his professional intuition that there was something wrong with this two-truck SS convoy with two 9 mm slugs in the back of his head.
Eight hours after that, they rolled into Odessa. There were seven ships tied to a pier. It was necessary for MacMillan to walk down the pier to look at the port of call painted on the stern of the MV Jose Harrez. He did not recognize the flag of Argentina. When it said Buenos Aires on the stern, he decided that he had drawn and filled an inside straight. The MV Jose Harrez was loading cargo, and her booms would handle the trucks.
With Private Loczowcza marching behind him, he took the salute of the Service Corps Feldwebel guarding the gangplank and marched up the gangplank to the ship. An officer directed him to the captain’s cabin.
The captain’s name was Kramer. He looked like a German. He spoke German.
“Do you speak English?” MacMillan asked.
“Yes, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” the captain said. “I speak English.” If he was surprised to be addressed by a German officer in English, he didn’t show it.
“There will shortly be two trucks on the dock,” MacMillan said. “I want you to pick them up and put them in your hold.”
The captain replied in German. MacMillan had no idea what he said.
“He said why should he do that, Mac,” Loczowcza translated.
“Because I will shoot you right where you sit if you don’t,” MacMillan said. He unholstered the Luger, but held it at his side.
“Under those circumstances, I don’t have much choice, do I?” the captain replied. He wasn’t flustered.
“None,” MacMillan said.
“If the German authorities learn that I am loading, or have loaded the trucks, would I be in danger?”
“From me, Captain,” MacMillan said.
“I suppose you have considered that this, in effect, is an act of piracy, punishable under international law? Wherever we dock next?”
“If the Germans catch us now, we’re all dead, right here,” MacMillan replied.
“I was about to say British,” the captain said. “But you’re American, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” MacMillan said. “I’m an American.”
“And to the victor go the spoils?”
“Spoils? You mean loot? You’re welcome to whatever is on the trucks.”
“Go get your trucks,” the captain said.
The Jose Harrez sailed at four the next morning. It was to proceed via the Suez Canal for Dar es Salaam, Capetown, and Buenos Aires. The trucks were unloaded during the day and dropped over the side after nightfall. The SS and Wehrmacht uniforms went over the side when a launch flying the flag of the Royal Navy came out to the Harrez off Port Said.
Neither MacMillan nor the captain ever mentioned the contents of the crates, even though MacMillan knew they had been opened, and even though he and the captain had become rather friendly during the seven-day voyage from Odessa.
As the launch pulled alongside the Harrez, Captain Kramer handed MacMillan an envelope.
“It’s all I can spare from the ship’s funds without questions being asked,” he said.
“Thank you,” MacMillan said. It was obviously money, but he didn’t count it. He just jammed it in his trousers pocket. His attention was on the crew of the launch. They were in whites. Short white pants, white knee socks, starched white shirts, with officer’s shoulder boards on the shirts.
MacMillan, wearing a woolen olive-drab shirt, OD pants, and combat boots, saluted the moment the Limey officer stepped onto the deck of the Harrez.
“Sir, Technical Sergeant R. J. MacMillan, United States Army, reporting with a party of twenty-two,” MacMillan said.
“I beg your pardon?” the Limey said. He did not return the salute.
(Six)
Cairo, Egypt
21 April 1945
The military attaché at the U.S. Embassy, Cairo, was an Air Corps full bird, an old one. He returned MacMillan’s salute casually and handed him a message form. MacMillan was still wearing the tunic in which he had been captured.
“I don’t know what to think of this, MacMillan,” he said.
“But nobody seems to know about you.” The colonel was an old soldier. He knew an old soldier when he saw one. There was a SNAFU someplace, but that didn’t help matters.
WAR DEPT WASH DC
20 APR 1945
US EMBASSY CAIRO EGYPT
FOR MILATTACHE
REF YOUR TWX 49765 9APR45:
WITH EXCEPTION MACMILLAN, PERSONNEL LISTED SUBJECT TWX AUTHORIZED PRIORITY SHIPMENT VIA MILITARY AIR TO ZONE OF INTERIOR. ALL PROVISIONS LIBERATED PRISONERS OF WAR APPLY. NOTIFY WAR DEPT DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF PERSONNEL BY PRIORITY RADIO HOUR AND DATE OF DEPARTURE AND ETA ZI RECEIVING STATION.
NO RECORD EXISTS OF POW TECHNICAL SERGEANT MACMILLAN, RUDOLPH GEORGE ASN 12 279 656. PENDING SEARCH OF OTHER FILES AND INVESTIGATION BY COUNTERINTELLIGENCE CORPS PERSONNEL, YOU ARE DIRECTED TO DETAIN MACMILLAN. POSSIBILITY EXISTS HE IS GERMAN DESERTER.
FOR THE CHIEF OF STAFF
EDWARD W. WATERSON
THE ADJUTANT GENERAL
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” MacMillan said.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Sergeant,” the military attaché said. “Five minutes after your plane leaves.”
“What’s that, sir?” MacMillan asked. He was not unduly upset. He was an old soldier; he was used to fuck-ups. He was pissed, but not disturbed. He didn’t think he was about to be shot by the U.S. Army as a German spy.
The military attaché handed him a message form.
FROM MILATTACHE USEMB CAIRO
FOR WAR DEPARTMENT WASHDC
ATTN DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF PERSONNEL
REFERENCE YOUR TWX 10APR45 RE TWENTY-THREE LIBERATED POWS. REGRET INFORM YOU ALL PERSONNEL MY BASIC TWX DEPART CAIRO BY MILAIR PRIORITY A1A 0700 HOURS 21APR45 FOR ZONE OF INTERIOR. DESTINATION FORT DEVENS MASS. ETA 1800 22 APR45.
BRUCE C. BLEVITT
COLONEL, AIR CORPS
MILITARY ATTACHE
“Thank you, Colonel,” MacMillan said.
“If you’re a German spy, Sergeant, I’m Hermann Göring,” the colonel said.
Two agents of the Counterintelligence Corps met the C-54 which had come from Cairo, via Casablanca and the Azores, to Logan Field in Boston. They were both Jewish. They rather conspicuously carried snub-nosed .38 caliber Colt revolvers in small holsters attached to their trouser belts.
They came on the plane before any passengers were allowed to debark.
“Which one of you is Tech Sergeant Macmillan?” one of them asked.
“I am,” MacMillan called.
They came to where he was sitting. One of them got in the aisle ahead of MacMillan; the other positioned himself so that MacMillan would be between them in the aisle.
“If you’ll come with us, please, Technical Sergeant MacMillan,” the one in front said.
“Jesus, Mac,” Loczowcza said, “he’s got a worse accent than Fritz the Feldwebel.”
“You will kindly keep to your own business,” the CIC agent said. “This does not concern you.”
MacMillan got out of his seat and started to walk down the aisle.
“Achtung!” the CIC agent behind MacMillan suddenly shouted. MacMillan turned around very slowly, at first confused, and then realized that the CIC agent was trying to “catch” him obeying a command in German, and thus “proving” he was a German spy.
‘Achtung!’ yourself, Humphrey Bogart!” he said, laughing, not angry.
The CIC agent, flustered, angry, suddenly drew his revolver.
“Put the cuffs on him!” he ordered.
“Jewboy,” Loczowcza said, firmly, not a shout, “you better put that thing away before Sergeant Mac makes you eat it. Or before I personally stick it up your ass.”
The CIC agent spun to face Loczowcza. Loczowcza found himself facing a p
istol. He slapped the CIC agent’s hand, knocking the pistol out of the way; and the revolver fired. The sound inside the aircraft’s enclosed fuselage was loud enough to be painful.
“Oh, shit!” someone shouted, almost a scream. “I’ve been shot!”
Loczowcza leaped from his seat and knocked the CIC agent down, and then pinned him to the aisle floor.
The other CIC agent, standing in the middle of the aisle, held his pistol in both hands and aimed it at first one and then another of the passengers, many of whom were getting to their feet.
“At ease!” MacMillan’s voice boomed. “At goddamn ease, goddamnit!”
There was silence.
“Let him up, Polack,” MacMillan ordered. Loczowcza backed away from the downed CIC agent.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” MacMillan said. “Just everybody take it easy.” He turned to the CIC agent wielding the pistol. He put his hands out to be handcuffed.
(Seven)
Fort Devens, Mass.
22 April 1945
The general’s aide-de-camp, a young first lieutenant in pinks and greens, opened the door to the general’s office and nodded at MacMillan.
“The general will see you now, MacMillan,” he said.
MacMillan, attired in brand-new ODs, their packing creases still visible, with brand-new low quarters on his feet and his Ike jacket sleeves bare of insignia, marched into the general’s office. He stopped three feet from the general’s desk.
“Sir,” he snapped, as his hand rose in salute, “Technical Sergeant MacMillan reporting to the commanding general as ordered.”
“Stand at ease,” the major general, a plump, ruddy-faced man in his early fifties, said, returning the salute. That was a reflex, a conditioned response, as automatic as was MacMillan’s instant crisp shifting of position from attention to parade rest. No matter what a general says to you, you don’t slouch. When a general gives you “at ease” you go to “parade rest.”
The commanding general of Fort Devens, Mass., looked at MacMillan as if he didn’t know where to begin.
“Welcome home, MacMillan,” the general said, finally. “I don’t suppose anyone has said that to you here, have they?”
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